The U.N.’s Hopeless Human Rights Council

As a number of critics of the U.N. reform process argued last year, the much-ballyhooed new United Nations Human Rights Council was unlikely to improve upon its much-derided predecessor. Those critics have been largely proven right by the Human Rights Council’s performance thus far. Steadfastly one-sided and relentlessly obsessed with Israel, the Council has failed to build any international credibility or goodwill. Today the NY Times editorial page, in a rare departure from the internationalist consensus has declared the new Council a “discredit to the United Nations:

The council is new, but its deliberations have already fallen into a shameful pattern. When it comes to the world’s worst and most consistent human rights violators, like China, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan, there has been a tendency to muffle words and conclusions and shift the focus from individual and political rights to broader economic and social questions.

But when it comes to criticizing Israel for violations committed in a wartime context that includes armed attacks against its citizens and soldiers, the council seems to change personality, turning harshly critical and uninterested in broader contexts.

I think the idea of a Human Rights Council that was able to articulate and develop universal and widely-accepted principles of human rights is a hopeless endeavour unless the United Nations departs from its basic conception of one-country-one-vote. Even weighted by region, the U.N. Human Rights Council will always reflect national political interests more than any particular ideological commitment if countries essentially get equal votes for the Council.

The NYT recognized this problem when the Council was created back in March. Jimmy Carter didn’t agree, nor did Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, but they were wrong. I think it is safe to declare that the UN Human Rights Council is one “reform” that is already a failure. Not a surpise, but regrettable nonetheless.